Best combi for small 3bdr house?

[spuorgelgoog]

Didn't we recently have a *shortage* of CO2?

Owain

[The Natural Philosopher]

Battery backed windmills and heatpumps is what they are talking about in the silly season.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

If it was the same interview I heard, they were on about tidal power as being the only reliable one. Thought that had already been costed and it's also the most expensive 'renewable' by miles.

[mechanic]

Same guarantee offer here (10yrs) from local supplier/installer provided we service every year. We have a 40kW WB combi and I wouldn't get another one - there's an annoying interaction between the HW and CH that makes for showers running hot or cold for a while when starting up, no probs in summertime with no CH demand. Even the wB helpline people only offer the usual "it's because there's storage in the pipes..." etc, overlooking the fact that it all works well in summertime. It's also more noisy than I expected, which might be a prob if the room it's in was occupied at night.

[John Rumm]

The installer may well mark it up, although I was paying "retail" prices from a local plumber's merchant - they seemed competitive with online prices.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

When I bought my Viessmann, it was about £300 cheaper online (Ebay) than my local Viessmann dealer. With free carriage.

[Chris Bartram]

Our old combi showed that symptom when the flow switch started to fail, but of course if you suspect the pump anyway it could be intermittent flow in the heat exchanger.

[Andrew]

I fail to see how anything that incorporates permanent contact with, or existance near salt water can be termed reliable, unless it is built to nuclear engineering standards, in which case ...

I visit Worthing regularly and the way the sea scours away and corrodes anything metal (or timber) is awsome.

[alan_m]

Renewable has never been cheap despite being sold as the sun and wind are free. It's much like the myth that the government are providing the money for "green" subsidies.

There was nothing about tidal in the interview I listened to but with the Extinction Rebellion protests every radio station had someone from the loony green community.

As for UK tidal it's not just cost but the practically/efficiency and the long term damage to the ecology.

[David]

Presume this is sarcastic?

Most people in NZ don't seem to have heat pumps, most don't have any heating apart from electric fires/fan heaters/radiators.

Houses are very poorly insulated as well.

I have a family member living there and have also extensively travelled in NZ.

Of course, some of the new builds may be different but the one I know about wasn't built to include a heat pump.

Cheers

Dave R

[David]

Just out of interest (at the moment) would the cost of replacing "like for like" be anywhere near that?

That is, removing an existing combination boiler and installing a new one in the same location.

Given that all the services (gas, water, electricity) should already be there I assume that the labour involved is significantly less than a new install or a full upgrade?

is currently listing WB boilers starting at £1099.24 including VAT so rashly assuming the labour would be 2 days that might bring the whole install in under £2k.

Cheers

Dave R

[alan_m]

There was a tiny bit on heat pumps on the radio today. It wasn't on saving energy but on the cost of running.

The general conclusion was that if you heated your house with mains gas you would probably save no money by replacing gas heating with a heat pump. The cost of running a heat pump with electricity plus the gain of the pump is negated by gas being 4x cheaper per unit.

For other forms of domestic heating the comparison will be different.

[John Rumm]

Yup. possibly...

A like for like swap on a combi should be cheaper than swapping the boiler and installing an unvented cylinder.